Dollhouse

Neat CD packaging designed by rethink. Here are some behind-the-scenes photos.

Leopard

Falls jemand das heute erscheinende Apple Betriebssystem Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) zu kaufen gedenkt, hier ist ein 10 Euro Gutschein für Amazon.de:

Gutscheincode: AMZNLPRDAPPL

John Szabo.

Awwww.. this girl was on my favourite Dinosaur Jr. band-tshirt when i was in highschool (and also the “Green Mind” album cover). Wearing this tshirt in the schoolyard is how i met Max, the american exchange student from Washington D.C. He was wearing the very same shirt and that incident let us become best friends during my last year in highschool till he went back to D.C. I finally met someone i could talk to about music for hours. Lots of fond memories. Yeah, we just talked! :-)

Today i found the new Lost at E Minor newsletter in my inbox and there was an interesting topic about Joseph Szabo in it. He is the photographer of this picture. So i wanted to know more about him.

Joseph Szabo’s subject is adolescence – the all too familiar, twilight time of life between childhood and young adulthood. For 25 years Szabo truthfully documented his teenage students at Malverne High School, Long Island. Taken in the seventies and eighties, these photographs represent a remarkable evocation of that period and yet there remains something timeless and compelling about Szabo’s portrait of the almost grown.

Here is a website about him. There is also a vintage book out there i definitely have to buy!

(BTW the girl’s name is Priscilla and the picture is from1969. I always thought she is too cool for school when i was young and a Dinsosaur Jr. fan..)

The Gum Thief

Seit 40 Jahren produzieren Musiker Videoclips, um ihre Alben zu bewerben. Warum sollen Buchautoren nicht das gleiche tun? Hat sich wohl auch Douglas Coupland gedacht:

Language poll (please vote or comment!)

With many longer post we’re writing, we’re asking ourselves: should we do it in English or German? German feels more comfortable to many of us, since it is our mother language. In English, more people are able to read …

We’re not going to stop writing in any of these two languages (some of our authors even don’t speak German! ;-), but it would be good to get a better feeling what the majority of our dear readers thinks (assuming there is some readership).

If you dislike polls, feel free to write a comment. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Commercial Break

We’re having a huge sale this week at our music mailorder. CDs from Piano Magic, Hood, The Remote Viewer, Maximo Park, American Analog Set, Stephen Malkmus, Sole, Lawrence are selling for just 4.90 Euro. We’ve also got some label specials from Carpark, Hausmusik, City Centre Offices, Onitor, Bubble Core and Klangkrieg… Lots of great stuff for little money.

Most items are available in very low quantities only. First come, first served. No reservations. Good luck.

The Glittering Blackness

Silke, die ab und an auch diese Seiten füllt, schreibt neuerdings auch ein eigenes Weblog, für das ich schon Rede und Antwort stehen musste durfte.

Sav

I don’t drink any alcohol, but i want those bottles.

desert island discs

i remember growing up as a kid and listening to the radio with my dad. either in the car or while doing some bricolage, the radio was always on. one of his favorite stations would do this show called “desert island discs”. in that show, they would play an entire CD, worthy of the desert island title.

if you were stranded on a desert island, which discs would you want to have with you?

if you could only choose 5, would you risk bringing a CD where only half the tracks were worthy? which CDs in your collection are truely good from beginning to end?

having posed this question, i cannot help wondering if the digital music revolution hasn’t killed the perfect record concept. buying one song with one click, creating a playlist of “best-ofs”, digesting mp3s faster than releases can be put out. does anybody have the time for a whole record anymore?

anyhow, i always enjoy this question because i could spend hours mulling over my music collection, adding and removing titles with pleasure, searching out the perfect discs for what could be a very lonesome journey into solitude with music as my salvation..

and speaking of being saved, tonight i suddenly had the urge to hear one of my favorite bands, rex. they were a sort of post-rock supergroup formed from the ashes of codeine and red red meat and topped off with lesser known, but equally good, chicago musicians . their 2nd record titled “C” is one of my favorite of all time and would definitely make it to the island.

I…love…Twin…Peaks…and…its…world

I’ve got all the 3 previously released DVD boxsets of Twin Peaks, but still I seriously consider to buy the Gold Box, just because of the last scene of this trailer, in which David Lynch speaks to the actors.

Magazine Cover Archive

The Nation Magazine Cover Archive (NMCA) is a non-commercial ‘hobbysite’ devoted to helping keep inspirational magazine design alive.

Atlas, Schmatlas

Do you know the full name of the Sultan of Brunei?
Do you know where Brazil dumps its waxed-off pubic hair?
Do you know who Jan Mayen was?
Do you know the origin of the doner kebab?
Do you mind if the answers to any of these questions are dealt with in a humorous and not-strictly-truthful manner?

If at least one of your answers to these questions is “no”, you should seriously consider to buy the new book by Sir Craig Robinson, “Atlas, Schmatlas”.

And don’t forget to check out the classic “Minipops”.

Golf Auditions

Here’s a cool web feature for Volkswagen Sweden done by Acne Digital – Web 4.0. I was laughing several times although I don’t understand a single word of swedish. Refreshing.

Der Killer von Wien

Nachdem ich vor einiger Zeit Dario Argento’s Suspiria im TV gesehen hatte und begeistert war, freue ich mich nun über die Entdeckung des Giallo Genre.

Als ich dem Videothekar mit der Hülle des genial klingenden Der Killer von Wien unter der Nase herumwedelte und fragte, ob er mir was zu diesem Film erzählen könne, holte dieser ein wenig aus. Und ich fühlte mich ertappt, Giallo nicht wirklich gekannt zu haben. Style, großartige Bilder, tolle Kamera, viel Sex, viel Gewalt waren einige der Schlagworte, die fielen – dabei war ich schon alleine durch das Cover-Artwork davon überzeugt, den Film mitzunehmen.

Und Der Killer von Wien ist tatsächlich ein heißer Tip für den gemütlichen Videoabend:

Mehr Giallo-Informationen:
http://www.killinginstyle.blogspot.com
http://giallo-fever.blogspot.com
Englische Wikipedia-Seite zum Giallo

Und hier ist ein sehr ausführliches Review zu Der Killer von Wien.

this goes out to all music tech geeks and lonely hearts.

great. dan deacon.

via hi-reS! Feed

Barfin’ Arfin.

Some of you might know Lesley Arfin because of her regular column in Vice magazine where she published her very own diary from age 11 to 25. Honestly i never happened to read her column though i read Vice magazine every once in a while and dare to say that i really enjoy that kind of stuff. When Johannes showed me their newly launched website a few weeks ago (which i think is also genius because it turned into a very entertaining web-tv website) i discovered the “Dear Diary” channel by Lesley Arfin (subtitled “Digging into the past with Lesley Arfin and her celebfriend Chloe”). I was immediately hooked because i am always interested in diaries and teenage angst (and also celebrities to be honest - i need my daily dose of d-listed and Perez Hilton..).

I myself never wrote any diaries. The few times i tried to do it i always had to barf all over the pages i just wrote because i couldn’t stand the blabber. I guess Lesley wasn’t so uncomfortable with her own writings, she just wrote and wrote and wrote about being popular in junior high, being an outcast in junior high, having bad ass friends in high school, being into hardcore and punkrock, then being into raves and special K, then going to Hampshire college where she started the harder stuff, finally living in New York City and becoming a full-blown junkie ending up in rehab twice.

Today she is clean and a while ago she dicided to turn her column into a book. Besides the diary entries there are little passages where she is interviewing her friends and enemies from the past (some of whom she hadn’t been in touch for years) which makes the book different from the vice column. When i read this book there were a lot of things that sounded familiar (okay, just to be clear here: i was never into the heavy narcotics department and therefore never had any excursions to the Betty Ford Clinic ;-)). Sometimes it makes you laugh hard and sometimes it even makes you almost cry, but after all it is a very honest book! Buy!

Wovon lebst du eigentlich?

Unser lieber Freund Rasmus Engler hat ein Buch veröffentlicht. Und nach Lektüre der ersten 140 Seiten kann ich sagen: Sehr gut, bitte kaufen.

Job, Geld, Leben - nichts ist mehr sicher. Auch für Kulturschaffende haben sich in den letzten Jahren die Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen verschärft. Welche Kompromisse müssen und wollen bildende Künstler, Musiker, Autoren, Designer und Modemacher eingehen, damit für Miete, Krankenkasse, Altersvorsorge oder schlicht für die alltäglichen Ausgaben gesorgt ist? Welche Nebenökonomie ermöglicht dem Kulturarbeiter seine künstlerische Freiheit? Jörn Morisse, Mitbegründer des virtuellen Netzwerkes Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur und Rasmus Engler, stets unter dem Existenzminimum lebender Musiker und Autor, sprachen mit 20 kreativ Tätigen über Strategien und Möglichkeiten jenseits von Festanstellung und Hartz IV sich mit wenig Geld über Wasser zu halten. Unverblümte Fragen, klare Antworten.

Hier ein Interview mit Rasmus.

Peecol toy series

A new creation by eboy: The Peecol toy series. Is there a way to get around these? Especially due to their very clever release announcements ready for christmas trade.

Every peecol character will have its own Myspace page. And there is a flickr group. Damn, these guys already own these guys.

experimental guitars

nothing wrong with some good old blog recycling…pitchfork has a nice interview with an experimental guitar builder, whose done some unique creations for various guitar heros, i.e. lee ranaldo of sonic youth. this particular creation basically made my jaw drop…

“It’s basically a two-string guitar with a built-in thumb piano. The strings of the guitar can be bent by a brake cable from a moped, which is connected to a foot pedal. When amplified, the thumb piano, which is mounted to the guitar body, has a very low and impressive sound, almost like a vibraphone.”

via music thing

Make a mellotron out of walkmans

Speaking of Compact Cassettes, here’s some Walkman vs. Arduino vs. QWERTY pleasure:

Via Make: Magazine.